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  • Mad Men Gives Jaguar A Coastal Google Search Bump

    [WARNING: Mad Men Season 5 spoilers ahead]

    This season of AMC’s Mad Men has been thrilling, poignant, heartbreaking, surprising, and might possibly have catapulted the show back into the title of “Best on TV” (apologies to Game of Thrones). Each episode has been masterful, reigniting the week-to-week excitement that I (and many others) haven’t felt since season one.

    And all of that excitement means that the brands featured in the show have the opportunity to see a spike in interest. After all, it is a show about advertising (among other things, of course). And what could be better advertising for a product than to be featured in Mad Men?

    Even if the product is portrayed in a negative light, it can still generate buzz. In the case of Jaguar, there’s no telling exactly why people took to Google to seek information, but they did – in droves.

    Google Auto
    @GoogleAuto     Looks like @JaguarUSA experienced a Mad Men search spike, mostly in New York and California: http://t.co/HvUx2Agz
    1 hour ago via HootSuite · powered by @socialditto
     Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite

    A quick look at the search data confirms this. The big spike you see is on Monday, May 28th, the day after Sunday’s Mad Men episode featured the car company. The search spike occurred mostly in California, New York, Texas, and Florida:

    Mad Men Jaguar Google Spike

    Like I said before, Jaguar hasn’t been receiving all positive press from Mad Men. Although the company has been portrayed as creating a car that’s sexy (like a mistress), Jaguar cars have also been called impractical and their reliability has been questioned. There’s also that sleazy part about a Jaguar exec demanding sex from buxom beauty Joan in order to sign off on Sterling, Draper, Cooper, Price’s representation.

    Jaguar USA has been following along with the show on Twitter:

    Jaguar USA
    @JaguarUSA     Loved the pitch, didn’t love the process. We applaud Peggy leaving SCDP. #MadMen #MadJag
    8 days ago via web · powered by @socialditto
     Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite

    And about that amazing scene where Lane Price attempts to commit suicide inside his new Jaguar but the car won’t start? Jaguar’s North American VP of Marketing had this to say about it:

    As soon as we see the tailpipe with cloth in it, we know this is going to be bad. “It won’t START. The car won’t start!” We have never been so happy to see our car not start. How weird is this? Maybe he doesn’t know how to use the choke?”

    But despite some of the more negative aspects of Jaguar’s image on the show, Google searches show that it got people interested.

    And this season of Mad Men didn’t just give Jaguar a boost, but another one of their clients saw a spike in searches as well. Earlier episodes featured pitches involving Heinz Baked Beans, a search term that saw some major spikes on, you guessed it, Mondays following Mad Men episodes. It’s fitting that the search popularity spike the most in the U.K., where 2.3 million Brits eat Heinz Bean(z) every day.

    Check out Don Draper pitch Jaguar below:

  • Google Launches Search Query Reports To All DoubleClick Search Customers

    In April, Google announced that DoubleClick Search V3 would soon provide users with the ability to report on search queries. Today, Google announced that on May 31, the search query reporting feature was released to all customers.

    “This powerful new feature provides you with insight into the search queries, or terms, that are driving visits for your ads and the revenue you derive from these queries,” Google says in a blog post. “Due to search engine broad and phrase matching, your ads are often triggered for more search queries than the exact keywords that you’re bidding on. While this is desirable, often you’ll want to view the exact queries that are triggering your ads and the cost and revenue impact of those queries.”

    The reports are designed to provide insights into the queries, which are driving traffic to your sites, as well as the revenue that traffic drives.

    Users can go to a campaign or ad group, click the “Search Queries” tab above the performance summary graph, and see the queries along with the visits and revenue they generated.

    Search query reports

    The reports can be downloaded, using the Download tab, so they can be analyzed offline. Reports can also be scheduled for regular delivery.

    “If you see a query that you think will perform better with a higher bid and you’re not already bidding on it, you can add them to any campaign: select the query in the table and click Add keywords. You can also set up the match type, bid, and URLs for these new keywords,” explains Google. “You can even decrease your costs and increase the ROI of your campaigns by adding negative keywords that you find in the query list. To do this, select a search query and click the Add campaign negative keywords or Add ad group negative keywords button. You can add them as campaign-level negatives or to each ad group.”

    Google says the search query reports are only the beginning of more advanced reporting in DoubleClick Search V3.

  • Google Is Now Getting Serious About Local Businesses

    Google has big plans for local businesses, and making billions for itself in the process.

    Google announced a major Google+ push into local search last week, when it revealed Google+ Local, which effectively turns Google+ business pages into the new local business hub across Google Search, Google Maps and Google+.

    “Much of the information from a business owners’ Google Place page – such as the business address, phone number, description, and Google reviews, and photos submitted by business owners and users – will automatically be ported over to the upgraded local Google+ page,” a Google spokesperson told WebProNews.

    “People used to be able to find information about a business on the Google Places page, but now, they’ll find much of that same information on the local Google+ page and enjoy the added ability to share that information with the people in their Google+ Circles,” they said. “This means that a business listing that could previously be found across Google Search, Google Maps, and Google Maps for mobile is still available in all those places, but is now also more easily discoverable to the millions of users on Google+ as well.”

    The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is readying a new “local ad assault,” led by executives Jeff Huber and Marissa Mayer, which should surface next month, and combines a variety of local-geared services “under a single banner,” once called Business Builder internally. According to the publication, it will include services powered by recent acquisitions Punchd and TalkBin, as well as AdWords Express, and of course a heavy Google+ push.

    AdWords Express (formerly known as Boost) launched last July in the U.S. It targeted businesses who weren’t already using AdWords. The company considered it a “fast/simple way for local businesses to start advertising online in less than 5 minutes”.

    “AdWords Express helps potential customers find your website or Place page, and gives you a quick and straightforward way to connect with them and grow your business,” AdWords Express Product Mangager Kiley McEvoy said at the time. “You simply provide some basic business information, create your ad, and your campaign is ready to go.”

    Punchd was a mobile loyalty card startup Google acquired (also last July). It was described as “the replacement for your buy-10-get-1-free cards at your favorite shops.”

    Google acquired TalkBin the April before that. It was described as a way for your business to deliver better customer experience by letting customers use their mobile phones to communicate to your business in real time. Customers could send businesses feedback, suggestions, and questions through short messages, which allowed the businesses to quickly respond (“immediately,” according to TalkBin’s site).

    “Central to the effort is Google+, the company’s social network, which it hopes consumers will use to interact with local businesses that now have special Web pages on the network,” reports the WSJ’s Amir Efrati. “Those Google+ pages will draw traffic from the company’s Web-search engine. When shoppers visit these businesses, Google wants them to use their Internet-connected phones like a digital wallet, earning loyalty points and making payments at stores that sign up for Google’s new services. In turn, Google is hoping stores and other businesses will use their new Google+ pages to communicate with customers, such as by showing them special offers. And it hopes to persuade them to sign up for other Google products.”

    According to Efrati’s report, Google hopes its new offering, which combines all of this, will bring in “billions of dollars a year in new revenue,” and gets “more merchants to spend money on digital advertising, including on Google’s search engine”.

    It’s no secret that Google’s average cost-per-click has suffered in recent quarters, largely due to increased mobile queries, where CPCs just haven’t matched their desktop counterparts. During the company’s Q1 earnings call in April, CEO Larry Page said advertisers always spend most of their money on the major source of traffic, which is desktop, but that over time, that will reverse. Over time, CPCs may actually get better,” he said. “We’re very bullish.” He added that Google is making lots of investments in that area, such as Google Offers and Google Wallet. Those combined with the suite described in the WSJ report could have a significant impact.

  • Google Adds Opt-Out To AdWords Rotation Change, Expands Rotation Window

    In May, Google made some changes to how ad rotation works in AdWords, changing it to a 30-day period, at which point AdWords would optimize to show higher performing creatives. After some users expressed concerns, Google announced today that it has made some adjustments.

    Google says it will expand the even rotation period from 30-days to 90, so there’s a longer testing window for new ads. Google is also offering an opt-out option, so advertisers can continue to have their ads rotate evenly indefinitely.

    VP, Product Management Nick Fox writes on the Inside AdWords blog about why Google updated how creative rotation works:

    With the modified Rotate evenly setting, our tests indicate that we will provide you with more valuable traffic in an automated, efficient manner. We’ve found that, on average, optimized creative rotation results in an increase in click-through rate and an increase in total conversion volume for advertisers. Here’s an example describing the benefit (note: data is intended for illustrative purposes only):

    Advertisement A has a 3% CTR, while Advertisement B has a 1% CTR. Under the original Rotate evenly setting, the ads would show roughly evenly, resulting in an average CTR of around 2%. Under the new setting, Advertisement A will show more frequently after the even rotation window has passed, bringing the average CTR closer to 3%, or a 50% increase in clicks. Our systems will also continue to run Advertisement B for a low fraction of traffic to continue to test how well it performs.

    If you want to opt-out of the rotation setting, there’s a form here. Changes will go into effect on June 11. Google says it will offer an opt-out option right in the AdWords interface if there is high enough demand.

  • GM Gets Dissed by Facebook, But Ford is Buying

    GM Gets Dissed by Facebook, But Ford is Buying

    You might recall that General Motors recently pulled all their advertising from Facebook’s pages and claimed that the ads weren’t really working for them. Of course, GM’s actions took place just days before Facebook’s much anticipated initial public offering, so it really grabbed everybody’s attention.

    Today, The Street published an article claiming that Facebook had indeed dissed General Motors by not allowing them to take over whole pages with their marketing efforts. As Ad Age put, advertising on Facebook has always been subtle, which apparently wasn’t working for the Detroit auto giant who insisted it must positioned in a more prominent light.

    But it is no secret that Facebook isn’t all about just merely positioning products to please advertisers. Their number one responsibility seems to be to their users and they are very conscious about making display decision which might turn their users off. So it’s a moral stand which Facebook made against GM, at least in the opinion of Ad Age and the Street.

    Regardless of who did what or who refused to budge, Ford Motors, one of the first to take advantage of Facebook’s pricey logout ads, seems to be loving the advertising space on the site. In fact, Ford is offering a whole new line of Blue Oval-branded products which will be featured on Facebook.

    Users who visit Ford’s fan page or several other related automotive places will see Ford t-shirts, toy cars, and select other merchandise featured on the right lower side of their wall. So while this format does not agree with GM, Ford is taking a more progressive stance, and making the best possible use of the product positioning opportunities.

    The overarching theme from both, the Street and Ad Age is that GM is still entrenched in an old model of marketing (and perhaps way of conducting business overall) while Facebook is attempting to promote and advance a more user-centric way of advertising and brand promotion.

    Ford is also embracing this spirit. They too have abandoned outdated company-originated development practices in favor of more opensource-oriented innovation efforts. They are doing their best to get community and fans alike involved in propelling the company forward and maintaing a competitive advantage.

  • Internet Explorer 10 First Browser With ‘Do Not Track’ by Default

    When Microsoft’s Windows 8 arrives to a computer near you it will have Internet Explorer 10 in tow, and with that browser will come a “Do Not Track” feature that will automatically be turned on. The privacy tool, which was backed by the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year, enables internet users to indicate to websites that they don’t wish to have their browsing habits tracked. Mozilla’s Firefox browser and Yahoo have been early endorsers of the feature, and Twitter recently welcomed the feature as well.

    The anti-tracking repellent might be welcome news to privacy advocates, but it’s more than likely to stick in the craw of one certain online company that relies on its capability to track users: Google. The search engine colossus’ bread and butter is personal information culled from internet users’ browsing habits. The cookies that Google uses on its sites and stores in browsers allow it to target people with personalized ads based on what the person’s browsing history is like. The Do Not Track feature, however, would block Google’s cookies and effectively diminish the quality of the company’s advertising strategy.

    The issue is larger than a Microsoft v. Google showdown, but the split between the two companies does summarize the debate about how the ‘Do Not Track’ feature should best be implemented. Brendon Lynch, Microsoft’s Chief Privacy Officer, explained the rationale behind equipping IE10 with ‘Do Not Track’ by default in an announcement yesterday, stating that Microsoft’s first interest is its customers’ privacy. While he doesn’t outright disdain the tracking of personal information by websites for the purpose of personalized ads, Lynch frames the argument for ‘Do Not Track’ as a way to give people the right to decide for themselves.

    We believe that consumers should have more control over how information about their online behavior is tracked, shared and used. Online advertising is an important part of the economy supporting publishers and content owners and helping businesses of all shapes and sizes to go to market. There is also value for consumers in personalized experiences and receiving advertising that is relevant to them.

    Google has publicly welcomed the ‘Do Not Track’ feature but the company was reluctant to accept the terms of the feature. This is unsurprising, really, considering a major impetus for ‘Do Not Track’ was Google’s relentless pursuit of user information in spite of browser security settings that clearly indicated that people didn’t want to be tracked.

    While Microsoft might have won some favor among privacy advocates, Google and the legion of advertisers who have grown accustomed to having their ads targeted to consumers in a personalized manner might not be so easy to accept IE10’s default ‘Do Not Track’ feature. But then again, if Google and advertisers believe it’s their manifest destiny to hound internet users and leech away their personal information and really want to quibble about consumers’ desire to opt out of their services, Microsoft’s decision to make ‘Do Not Track’ as a default function will only gain legitimacy.

  • Facebook, Advertisers Still at Psychological Loggerheads

    Facebook’s still clutching onto the belief that it can have its marketing cake and eat it, too. The company, or more directly, the company’s CEO and founder, Mark Zuckerberg, is steadfast in maintaining that ads don’t interrupt the user experience of the website. However, major league advertisers have no qualms about making those interruptions – just look at any television for five minutes – and are used to reaching out and grabbing consumers by the collar to force them to look for 5 to 15 to 30 seconds at a time.

    Facebook has the daunting task of making its case to advertisers who are used to being able to buy splash page adverts or online ads that will unroll across the screen when you mouse over them. They’re used to paying for prominence by guaranteeing that their ads are seen. To most high-profile advertisers, that is advertising: you make memorable commercials or eye-catching photospreads or snappy jingles that set you apart from all other advertisers. The closest Facebook’s come to replicating that experience for advertisers is by offering up the most ineffective space possible: the log-out screen. If you’re like me or most people, though, you likely just stay logged in to Facebook while you’re browsing. Depending on your security settings, if you close a tab or even the entire browser window, the browser will still keep you logged into Facebook so you never need to sign out. In other words, it’s rare if anybody would even see the ads on the log-out screen and, of the places a business can advertise, while the billboard space may be bigger on that screen, it’s also the least likely place to be seen by a Facebooker.

    The immediate problem seems to be a generational divide between Facebook’s new model of advertising and the old guard of advertisers, like GM, who made quite a scene with its decision to pull paid advertisements from Facebook a mere few days before Facebook’s initial public offering. Despite the perceived lack of results from businesses both large and small, Facebook maintains that its new style of advertising by camouflaging advertisements among the actual posts from people a user actually knows can be just as effective has the splash pages of old. Facebook’s Vice President of Global Marketing Solutions, Carolyn Everson, speaking to Ad Age, reiterated the company’s commitment to the plan to blend advertisements as inconspicuously as possible on the platform.

    “We have 900+ million people on the platform and our job is to make the advertising on the platform as good and as compelling as content from [users’] parents or their friends or their boyfriends or girlfriends,” said Ms. Everson. “So when a marketer asks for something like that [meaning bigger ads that stand out], that’s just not what works on Facebook, so we would say no.” She said Facebook rarely fields requests for bigger ad units.

    The most common complaint is that these subtle advertisements only lead to likes and other engagement but don’t actually turn over a financial kickback. That’s where the crux of Facebook’s whole advertising problem comes in: people still aren’t really sure how to measure the weight of Facebook “likes” against actual new customers and revenue gained from the ad campaign on Facebook. “Liking” something on Facebook is so effortless that people can follow a business Page with hardly any hesitation. Hell, I can “like” things that I honestly detest just to keep up on what my enemy interests are up to. It’s such a meaningless metric when it comes to generating revenue. The only thing it could possible do is add to the overall dossier that Facebook has on its users so as to optimize targeted ads but Facebook hasn’t really scratched the surface of that potential.

    Facebook appears to be hedging all of its bets on the value of a psychological residue produced by customers interacting with brands so that, in the long run, these customers will have positive emotional attachments to these businesses whenever they need to purchase something manufactured or provided by said company. Still, publishing quirky quizzes and offering the odd coupon isn’t guaranteed to create customer loyalty any further than momentarily stoking the coals of consumers’ mercenary tendencies just enough for them to pay attention for a second until the next shiny deal comes there way.

    Advertisers want to play a long game by going at consumers with ads that you can’t help but see while Facebook’s sticking to the short game of delicately splicing ads into news feeds that, honestly, if you scrolled too fast, you would probably miss them. At same time, Facebook’s counting on that ad subtlety to encourage businesses to engage customers as more than just cattle; or, at least, as intelligent cattle who are worth developing a mom-and-pop-style relationship with. But even if businesses do undertake that advertising challenge, there’s still no proof that such an effort will produce revenue, and without any proof that their efforts are worthwhile, businesses are right to hesitate on advertising on Facebook until there’s some more tangible results to show what actually works on the site.

  • Google Report Shows Popularity Of Different Ad Units

    Google released a new report called “Display Business Trends: Publisher Edition,” which looks at aggregated global data across its display ad solutions, including: the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, DoubleClick for Publishers, and the AdSense network.

    “The goal is not to give a snapshot of our business, but rather to provide some insights into the overall publisher landscape that we hope publishers (and the general industry) find valuable,” a Google spokesperson tells WebProNews.

    Google says it’s releasing the report (which is the first in a series) to generate metrics that will answer some common questions the company gets from its partners, as well as to “put some data behind long-held industry assumptions.”

    According to the report, the 468×60 banner ad unit dropped down to 3% of all impressions, while “brand-friendly premium” units are gaining share. Google says smaller ad units are dropping in popularity. “However nearly 80% of all impressions are the ad unit “three musketeers”: the medium rectangle, leaderboard, and skyscraper still comprise the vast majority of ads served,” Google Display Advertising Director of Product Management Jonathan Bellack says in a blog post.

    “Of a possible estimated 245 different countries and territories, we saw publisher ad impressions from 235 of them,” says Bellack. “These included the island country of Palau – one of the world’s newest sovereign states – and the middle-African nation of Equatorial Guinea, with astounding growth rates of 1106% and 4635% respectively. And while the United States still accounts for the highest percentage of impressions overall, we’re seeing a significant representation from China and Japan, coming in at 11% and 6% respectively.”

    Impressions by country

    Shopping, Sports, and Auto & Vehicle sites have been the fastest-growing verticals on the Ad Exchange and Adsense, Google says, while 15 out of 25 publisher verticals displayed double-digit growth year-over-year. Mobile web impressions on the Ad Exchange and AdSense increased by 250% from the third to fourth quarter of 2011. Video ad impressions increased by 70% across the DFP Video platform for the same period.

    You can find the whole report here (pdf).

  • Can Search Save Yahoo?

    Can Search Save Yahoo?

    To say that Yahoo has had its share of problems in the past few years is an understatement. The most recent news of the now former CEO Scott Thompson and his resume scandal has only added to the disorder surrounding Yahoo. The once highly regarded Internet giant has experienced all types of turmoil including numerous management changes, extensive layoffs, and the closing of multiple properties, all of which have raised a lot of questions about the company’s future.

    Do you think Yahoo can make a comeback in search? Let us know in the comments.

    The company’s “Search Alliance” with Microsoft leaves plenty of questions about the company’s future in search, as well, but there are rumors going around that the deal may not play out as planned. We spoke with Kevin Ryan, the CEO of Motivity Marketing, who says that based on rumors floating around in the industry, the search alliance between Yahoo and Microsoft might not make its projected 10-year tenure.

    “There’s a lot of rumors in the business that [it] isn’t going well, and that it’s not going to make the full-decade run,” he tells us. “So, if I’m Yahoo, I’m spending a little bit of money trying to figure out how we can get that search bucket going.”

    When the agreement was reached, Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan spoke with us about the impact of the deal on each company. “[A] big win for Microsoft, a lot of questions for Yahoo,” he summarized.

    “Yahoo effectively threw in the towel with search,” says Ryan of the alliance.

    Despite the many reports on the struggling search alliance, David Pann, the General Manager of Search Networks at Microsoft, spoke with us last year and pointed out that the companies had already experienced success, even in its early stages.

    “It’s easy to say, ‘Okay, well, you didn’t do this, you didn’t that – it’s a failure,’” Pann explained. “I don’t think of that. I think that, given where we are, and given the complexity of the relationship… we’re actually making very good progress.”

    However, if the rumors are true and Yahoo does pull out of its agreement with Microsoft, the company will have to begin thinking about search again. The only other option would be to sell its search business completely.

    Kevin Ryan, CEO of Motivity Marketing According to Ryan, there are several instances that could be credited as catalysts for Yahoo’s downward sprial, but he believes its Panama search ad platform played a large role in beginning the downfall. Panama was Yahoo’s attempt to monetize search, as Google did, but instead, Ryan says it was an “abject failure” for Yahoo.

    Ryan compares Yahoo’s current situation to what happened with Ask. The former search engine pulled out of the search industry in 2010 and has now transformed itself into a questions and answers service with an emphasis on mobile.

    There are some who would likely consider Yahoo to be a former search engine as well. Yahoo is currently in the process of reinventing itself as a media company, but the company’s short-term leaders have had difficulty in making this transition. Ryan, however, doesn’t believe this particular attempt is the best option for Yahoo.

    “Stop trying to reverse engineer HuffPo,” said Ryan, “and create something new.”

    But, Yahoo’s performance as a media company has been nothing to shake a stick at, and for many, Yahoo’s homepage works very well as a portal to the Web. Just take a look at Yahoo’s realtime homepage view counter at any given day. So far today (at 8:30AM Pacific), the page has already seen over 73 million views .

    Yahoo Homepage views

    Still, Ryan tells us that Yahoo should reinvest in its core business, in which search plays a very big role. With a renewed focus in this area, he believes Yahoo could better serve consumers and also advertisers, which could help it get back on the right track.

    Ryan told us there could be opportunities for Yahoo in terms of social development. Both Google and Bing have yet to completely succeed in social, which leaves an open door for Yahoo. He believes that a renewed focus on search combined with the opportunities in social could help to begin to turn Yahoo around. In addition, Ryan would like to see Yahoo make drastic changes internally in order to streamline its processes and improve its culture.

    “I hope that the change that Yahoo makes will be very internal,” he said. “I hope that the culture internally will become much more positive, but we’ll see.”

    At this point, Ross Levinsohn is Yahoo’s interim CEO. Although some people believe he will become the permanent CEO, Yahoo has not indicated any official word for who its next leader will be.

    It’s inevitable that changes will happen at Yahoo in the coming months, but what they will be and whether or not they will be effective in saving the company are both still in question. On the positive side, Yahoo was able to finally reach an agreement with Alibaba Group. The $7 billion deal will require Yahoo to sell back half its stake in the Chinese company, but it brings resolution to one of its many problems.

    Do you think search should play a significant role in Yahoo’s future as a company? Share your thoughts in the comments.

  • Facebook May Be Looking to Purchase Opera [RUMOR]

    According to a source close with Pocket-lint, Facebook is said to be on the prowl to acquire Opera Software, maker of the Opera web browser.

    There are a few reasons for why this sounds plausible and one or two for why it doesn’t. The most obvious reason that lends any validity to this rumor is the fact that Facebook’s money has been burning a hole in its pocket lately. In a little over a month, Facebook has acquired or absorbed Lightbox, Karma, Bolt Peters, and, perhaps most notable, Instagram. The company just ballooned its coffers after the company’s initial public offering one week ago and, in spite of seemingly everyone except Facebook being very upset with the its shares’ performance so far, Facebook does have some more money to burn.

    More, Facebook has been upfront about the fact that it’s losing revenue traction due to more users accessing the site via mobile app than through the actual webpage. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, heading into the company’s IPO, tried to assuage investors’ concerns about Facebook’s mobile problem by telling them that the mobile frontier is the company’s top priority. If Facebook were to pick up Opera, the acquisition would add a very established mobile browser to the company’s inventory of mobile tools. Also, assuming that time is of the essence in turning Facebook’s mobile platform into a source of revenue growth, purchasing a respected browser like Opera would curtail any time lost spent on building a Facebook browser from scratch.

    Beyond adding a slick, respected browser into its quiver, an acquisition of Opera would give Facebook a really nice browser-based email client, too.

    It’s been all but officially verified by Facebook that it is developing its own search engine, too. Analysts have already speculated that a Facebook search engine would take a huge bite out of Google’s dominance of internet search. Combine a Facebook search engine and a Facebook browser and a Facebook email client and, well, you’ve got yourself some pretty plump Facebook fruit to attract advertisers.

    Plus, if Facebook really wants to take a legitimate run at toppling Google, this would be a pretty firm push in that direction.

    However, Facebook’s passed on big-time purchases before. Microsoft reportedly tried to sell its search engine, Bing, to Facebook last year. Zuckerberg declined the offer, though, saying that Facebook had too much on its plate at the time.

    Facebook’s plate has hardly gotten any less crowded since then; really, the company’s added a second and third helping onto the plate without even clearing off what was there in the first place. Between the IPO mess and the impending class action lawsuits happening as a result of it, an FTC probe into the company’s acquisition of Instagram, and trying to find a way to earn back investors’ trust, Facebook’s got its big, blue hands full.

    In the end, it’s a matter of what Facebook wants to prioritize: cleaning up its act with its nascent yet lackluster existence as a publicly traded company, or trying to keep moving forward with its agenda as a technology company. Then again, the company could take the Double Dare challenge and go after both goals at once. Not impossible, but it could lead to some haphazard decisions.

    For what it’s worth, Thomas Ford, Opera System’s senior communications manager, says Opera Systems is mum on the subject of a Facebook acquisition. He told WebProNews, “We do not respond to market rumors and we have no comment to the rumor addressed in the question.”

  • Facebook Promoted Posts Feature Starting to Show Up for Some Pages

    According to a couple of sources out there in the internet, Facebook has started to roll out the Promoted Post feature for Page administrators. Whenever the feature arrives for you and yours, you’ll notice a new “Promote” option next to the box where you type your status update; as of now, from what others have been reporting, the option will sit to the left of the drop-down menu of lists of audiences you want to share your post with, which is next to the blue “Post” button.

    The polished up debut of Promoted Posts appears to build upon something Facebook tested out as far back as March 2010. Essentially, the purpose of paying to promote your update is to reach a larger audience. Upon clicking the “Promote” button, you’ll be presented with a menu of pricing options. The prices to promote a post are staggered based on how much of a reach you want for your post. If you’re aiming for the fences, for example, you can pay $20 to reach about a wide audience of Facebookers who have liked your Page. Alternately, if you want to aim more conservatively, you can select a less expensive value, such as $5, the cheapest (that I’ve seen), to only reach about a more concentrated selection your total fanbase.

    WebProNews’ Facebook page hasn’t yet been granted the Promote function just yet, but the example below was captured by MarketingLand, who apparently have the feature now.

    Image courtesy of MarketingLand

    They’ve got a few other examples of what the new feature looks like on their post about it, if you’re so inclined to investigate the visual evidence further.

    More, Facebook appears to be testing out different pricing structures. Another example spotted over at Business Insider lists the dollar increments as $15, $20, $30, $50, and $75. If I had to guess at this point, I’d say that the different pricing structures – notice BI’s gets a lot more expensive than MarketingLand’s – the different pricing scales are relative to the amount of Facebook fans your Page has. However, if that is the case, it almost seems like Facebook would then be penalizing Pages that have a ton of fans if it’s going to cost those administrators more money to promote a post than it would if they had, say, a fourth of the fans. Guess we’ll wait and see once this feature is fully available.

    This Promoted Post feature doesn’t sound all too dissimilar to something Facebook was testing in New Zealand recently by giving the average Facebook user – not to be confused with the Page users that are for brands, companies, celebrities, etc. – an option to promote their posts. The pay option to promote your post to all of your friends ran about a $1.50 but there weren’t any reports that there were multiple pricing tiers.

    Finally, there’ve been some reports throughout the day today that businesses have been having trouble posting updates to their Facebook Pages, so there could be a possible connection to Facebook’s decision to start rolling out the Promoted Posts option to pages and this temporary impairment of Page administrators’ ability to post links. As of writing this, we’re still not able to post links through our WPN page.

    Anybody else out there getting their hands on the Promoted Post feature early? Let us know what you think, if you’d ever use it, why you’d use it, all that good stuff in the comments below.

  • Is DuckDuckGo Gaining Ground on Google?

    Is DuckDuckGo Gaining Ground on Google?

    In recent years, the search industry has not changed a lot in terms of large players. Google has maintained the leader position with its ownership of nearly 70 percent of search market share. The #2 and #3 spots have changed slightly after the Microsoft-Yahoo Search Alliance in 2009. According to the most recent Experian-Hitwise statistics, Bing-powered search has risen to 30 percent.

    Hitwise April Search Market Share Report

    In 2010, Ask exited the search business to focus its efforts on a Q/A service and mobile endeavors. Also in 2010, Blekko launched with the goal of becoming the “#3 search engine” by tackling the growing problem of spam with its slashtag technology approach.

    Other than these events, the search player side of the industry has been relatively quiet. There is, however, current talk of Yahoo re-entering the search market and pulling out of its 10-year search deal with Microsoft. This week, the company introduced Yahoo Axis, which could be its first move in this direction.

    Still, there is one more player that we have yet to mention – DuckDuckGo. This search engine launched quietly in 2008 and has stayed somewhat low on the radar until recently. It is getting a lot of attention now though for the bold position it is taking on major issues.

    Gabriel Weinberg, Founder of DuckDuckGo When we talked with the search engine’s founder Gabriel Weinberg last year, he told us that DuckDuckGo was focused on building a search alternative to Google. The search engine separates itself from other search engines through its Zero-Click Info feature that provides instant answers to search queries, its user experience that is free of both spam and clutter, and its privacy protections for users.

    Over the past year, DuckDuckGo has ramped up its efforts in each of these areas, and as a result, users are noticing. In a recent conversation with Weinberg, he tells us that DuckDuckGo receives just under 50 million search queries a month, which translates into about 1.5 million each day. In other words, the search engine has more than doubled its traffic.

    “We’ve grown gradually since the beginning, but we had a major uptick at the beginning of the year when we launched a visual redesign,” said Weinberg.

    He explained that DuckDuckGo made around 100 changes that it rolled out in that redesign. More recently, the search engine announced an effort that encourages developers to add instant answer plugins to DuckDuckGo. The initiative is called DuckDuckHack and is geared toward making the search experience faster and more relevant.

    DuckDuckHack Example

    Local, mobile, and social are also just as important to DuckDuckGo as they are to other search engines. Instead of viewing them as individual products, however, it uses an “umbrella approach” for them. In other words, all these areas are incorporated into finding the best search results.

    “Instead of tailoring results to you personally,” says Weinberg, “we, instead, return results that are generally known to be good.”

    Ultimately, DuckDuckGo is trying to improve in all the areas that Google seems to be lacking in. For instance, Google has had many struggles regarding content farms and spam in the past couple of years. Although it has attempted to address these issues with the ongoing Panda updates, some people, including Weinberg, believe the problems still exist.

    “A lot of it seems opaque to me,” said Weinberg. “I’m sure there’s a ton of changes, but I still see a lot of the same kind of, what I consider, content farms on Google.”

    The privacy issues against Google continue to build as well. The search giant has received scrutiny from both the U.S. and Europe, and after releasing its new privacy policy earlier this year, it has gotten even more criticism.

    For DuckDuckGo, this turn of events creates an opportunity. As users become more dissatisfied with Google, Weinberg is hoping that they’ll look to his search engine as an alternative.

    “We’re making the case that there are certainly some users who would prefer to be tracked a lot less,” he said. “I really think there is a percentage who prefer alternative experiences.”

    The irony in all this is that DuckDuckGo makes money the same way that Google does – through advertising based on search queries. But, “you don’t have to track users to do that,” Weinberg says.

    “The problem is that they want to serve better ads across their sites where you don’t have that search query to serve an ad against,” he further explained.

    While it is possible that DuckDuckGo could begin to pull away some of Google’s search market share, Weinberg tell us that DuckDuckGo has no desire to become a big corporation. Web search is the company’s #1 priority at this point, and he intends to keep it that way.

    “Our goal really is just to build a nice alternative search engine that… a decent percentage of people would prefer as their search engine of choice,” he said.

  • Facebook Wants You to Buy Premium Ads Via Power Editor, API

    Can you recall back to February when Facebook was still a private company but was planning to flip into the public realm in a few months? Remember back then at the company’s marketing conference when COO Sheryl Sandberg and friends pitched Facebook to businesses and announced a new series of advertising options on the website, such as premium ads? This was the first leg of Facebook’s attempt to start making money off of its mobile platform.

    You could be forgiven for having let that day slip from your mind given how all of the news these days about Facebook’s struggling Nasdaq performance, but Facebook doesn’t want you to forget about those premium ads. Especially now of all times.

    That may be why Facebook is attempting to jog the memory of advertisers by introducing a new tool to ease the purchase of premium ads. Facebook may soon add the capability to purchase premium ads through the use of the the site’s power editor, a tool that lets advertisers mass edit ads as well as monitor how those ads are faring out in the wild. The company is said to be collaborating with developers and advertisers in order to come up with more ways for businesses to buy ads – features that may be rolling out in a matter of weeks.

    In addition to adding the ability to purchase ads within power editor, look out for a second ad-purchasing tool through Facebook’s API.

    Regardless of whether the ads actually do anything for advertisers, Facebook is really trying to expedite the management of the premium ads lately. In March, the company launched a handy-dandy demo tool for premium ads so that businesses could get a clearer glimpse of what their ads were going to look like once they were officially deployed.

  • Scumbag Steve Goes From Meme To Spokesperson

    Scumbag Steve Goes From Meme To Spokesperson

    While you know him better as Scumbag Steve, Blake Boston is a living example of how to exchange Internet fame (infamy?) into real world financial gain. After finding his Internet fame via the Reddit collective, Scumbag Steve is about to appear in an ad campaign for Pepsi’s Brisk iced tea. It should be noted that the ad campaign finds Pepsi not only partnering with the popular meme figure, the company is also leveraging the Imgur image hosting service.

    According to Agency Spy, promoted images of Scumbag Steve’s Brisk campaign will appear on Imgur, which will no doubt make use of the meme images that made Boston such a popular figure on the Internet. While there’s been no discussion of Steve’s financial reward for the ad campaign, it’s not a stretch to think it will be fairly lucrative.

    For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Scumbag Steve meme, Know Your Meme is all over it, complete with examples of the images that led to his notoriety. Then there’s the videos Blake/Steve has created, demonstrating he, too, is having fun with his Internet fame:


    And no, those videos are not for the same song. Sure, they sound alike, but then again, so does every song ever recorded by Katy Perry, and she doesn’t get knocked for her hustle. With that in mind, neither should Steve/Blake. Naturally, Twitter noticed Steve’s good fortune:

    (image) Brad Eshbach
    @bbbrad     Brisk Tea teams up with Scumbag Steve (yes, that Scumbag Steve) to make banner ads you might actually notice: http://t.co/9EsyD37I
    33 minutes ago via Buffer · powered by @socialditto
     Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite

    (image) Donna D.
    @MildlyAmused     Stop it Internet RT @copyranter: Scumbag Steve is now a SpokesScumbag for Pepsi: http://t.co/s8nWRdyF #EndTimes
    2 hours ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto
     Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite

    Shouldn’t that be “stop it Pepsi?”

    (image) Tom Megginson
    @CreativeTweets     Work That Matters: “Scumbag Steve” #meme the latest victim of product placement http://t.co/kKLUnXer
    2 hours ago via Tweet Button · powered by @socialditto
     Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite

    Victim? I think our definitions differ… While it appears as if the Scumbag Steve/Brisk Iced Tea ads will be image-based, I’m not going to let that stop me from featuring a couple of my favorite Brisk ads from years past:


    Let’s just hope Scumbag Steve’s image ads are as cool as a claymation Bruce Lee.

  • Quizzes & Coupons Key to Facebook Ad Engagement

    Say what you want about coupon users, but one thing stands apparent: that’s the way to consumers’ hearts if you’re looking to increase the engagement of your marketing campaign on Facebook. According to a study from Wildfire Interactive, that method of baiting customers to respond to your ad beat out every other enticement, including giveaways and sweepstakes (both of which still worked fairly well, suffice to say).

    The survey gauged the performance of 10,000 randomly selected ad campaigns on Facebook. As far as the promise of gratification goes that drives any campaign, my speculation is that a coupon is the most accessible and immediate reward. Giveaways and sweepstakes aren’t as guaranteed and, as you can see in the graph below, nobody wants to do any work extra work to engage your ad. So yeah, don’t make us write essays or compose visual media. Just give us discounts on burritos and new pants we’ll need after our waistlines bulge from gorging ourselves on too many burritos.

    Facebook Ad Engagement

    However, if you’re more interested in getting some semi-viral interaction among consumers, offering up quizzes for people to take is a great way to do that. According to the survey’s findings, 82% of Facebookers were likely to click on quizzes posted by their friends and actually went on to take the quiz. That’s a lotta earned impressions your ad campaign gets as a bonus. Plus, who doesn’t love a good quiz? You can find out what kind of latte you are or which Beatle you are or what your odds are of surviving an invasion of mutant zombies. It’s happy meal science and doesn’t actually reveal any insightful discoveries about your subconscious, but it’s fun to pass around and compare with your friends.

    Facebook Ad Engagement

    [Via AllFacebook.]

  • Microsoft And 24/7 Media Announce Big Ad Partnership

    Microsoft And 24/7 Media Announce Big Ad Partnership

    Microsoft and 24/7 Media announced a new partnership, which will see the Microsoft Advertising Exchange become the exclusive third-party ad exchange offered by Real Media Group to Open AdStream publishers.

    “The incredible promise of digital advertising has been somewhat hindered by the unwanted inefficiencies as a result of market fragmentation,” a representative for Microsoft tells WebProNews. “All advertisers and publishers want are simple solutions that will help make ad buys with the best ROI.”

    As part of the partnership, the Microsoft Media Network will be granted programmatic access to Real Media Group’s premium inventory. That makes Microsoft the only source not run by WPP (parent company of 24/7 Media) with such access.

    Automated media planning tool 24/7 Connect will include Microsoft’s full catalog of ad offerings. Microsoft’s Atlas will also become one of WPP’s preferred ad servers, and offer “expanded opportunities,” according to the announcement. Specifically, there will be integration between 24/7 Trader (24/7 Media’s demand side platform used by WPP) and Microsoft’s Atlas ad server.

    “This is an exciting day for 24/7 Media, WPP and our clients globally,” said 24/7 Media CEO David J. Moore. “In partnering with Microsoft, one of our largest and most strategic clients, we are creating a very powerful suite of capabilities that rivals any other offering available today in digital marketing.”

    “We’re very pleased to be able to strike this partnership with 24/7,” added Rik van der Kooi, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Advertising. “Our mission is to provide extraordinary experiences for consumers and effective solutions for our digital marketing partners. Marketers are telling us they need to get their hands on premium quality inventory at-scale by reducing friction, which is what this deal will do. And unlocking new demand for publishers’ inventory through our Exchange will similarly create new value in the market.”

    The global online ad market is estimated to exceed $98 billion this year, according to GroupM, and this deal represents a partnership between two major powerhouses in that space. Between this and the its “search alliance” with Yahoo, Microsoft is putting together some pretty astounding advertising partnerships. Of course, there are rumors that the search alliance could break up before its full ten years are up.

  • Google AdWords, AdSense Ads Get Some Changes

    Google is now showing text that says “Ads related to” (and then whatever the search query was) when it displays AdWords ads at the top of search results pages.

    For example, here, you see “Ads related to shoes”:

    Ads Related To

    This was pointed out by Thomas Ballantyne at Dreams Systems Media on Friday, and confirmed by Search Engine Land as having rolled out (as opposed to being a test) today. Pamela Parker shares a quote from a Google spokesperson, saying, “As part of our ongoing efforts to show ads that are relevant and informative, we are including more information about why users are seeing certain search ads.”

    Additionally, Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable reports that Google has removed arrows to scroll through AdSense ads, which were introduced in 2008.

    Last week, Google introduced some refinements to AdSense reporting, including the ability to view all-time reports, access reports from the My Ads tab and download CSVs in the correct local formatting.

  • Facebook International Ad Revenue Is Pretty Bad

    The kicks just keep coming when it comes to Facebook’s advertising value. Today’s entrant: the company’s international ad revenue is the pits.

    Business Insider took a look at how Facebook’s advertising model is working beyond the borders of the United States and found some rather pathetic results. Facebook users produced nearly $10 per person in ad revenue last year in the U.S., but those numbers clip off precipitously when you start to look at different regions. In Europe, the revenue is just under $5 while Asia is a meager $1.79 and in the rest of the world users are churning up a lowly $1.42 per person.

    Graph courtesy of Business Insider

    The way each of those different regions trend, it’s a good thing there’s not more parts of the world or else those bar graphs would be inverted and Facebook would end up actually paying users to look at ads. Actually, I wouldn’t mind that at all, but I’m sure all those investors would mind considerably.

    So what’s a Zuckerberg to do? Really get to work on a strategy that actually makes some money off of Facebook’s mobile platform? Focus more on making advertising tools more effective? They should probably start at something soon, as today’s activity on the stock market doesn’t really inspire much excitement from Facebook.

  • GM’s Pulling of Ads from Facebook Wasn’t Personal After All

    Told ya! Following a Reuters report earlier today that revealed Facebook had actually encouraged General Motors to utilize the website’s free pages, thus lessening the import of GM’s announcement from earlier this week about no longer paying for Facebook ads. Now, someone from the Wall Street Journal has revealed that GM won’t be advertising at the next Super Bowl, either.

    Suzanne Vranica, an advertising and marketing reporter at the Journal, tweeted the news:

    VranicaWSJ
    @VranicaWSJ     WSJ :GM to sits out Super Bowl w/@sharonterlep
    1 hour ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto
     Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite

    According to the accompanying report, GM’s global marketing chief, Joel Ewanick, the same guy on Tuesday that said paid ads on Facebook don’t work (in so many words), has concluded that buying ads during the Super Bowl is too expensive to justify the cost.

    Given that GM’s the third largest advertiser during Super Bowls, today’s decision helps defuse any of the controversy that got blown up after the company decided it would no longer pay for ads on Facebook (GM’s still dedicating $30 million to using Facebook’s free services).

    All of this advertising reshuffling by GM is due to the company’s effort to optimize its advertising strategy and get the most out of its ad budget. And while this Facebook/GM story is starting to sound like it’s going to go out with a whimper, GM’s timing to announce its withdrawal from paid Facebook ads only a few days before Facebook’s IPO remains a little suspect.

  • Facebook IPO Finally Here, Is Facebook’s Version of AdSense On The Way?

    Two years ago, we asked if Google’s AdSense could be in trouble because of Facebook. The premise of this article was essentially: What if Facebook launches its own AdSense-like ad network? Why wouldn’t it? It makes too much sense.

    Today, of course, Facebook finally went public, and there’s a whole lot of talk about what Facebook might do in the future. How can it bring in more revenue? It’s got a long way to go to get to Google-like revenue. Could an AdSense-like network be on the way? Are we getting closer to this being a reality? Some seem to think so.

    TechCrunch’s Josh Constine speculated about this, saying, “Facebook’s ad network [would] essentially turn ad real estate on any website into places to serve the campaigns that advertisers buy for display on Facebook.com. Anyone currently logged into Facebook who visits one of these sites would be shown ads targeted by their Facebook information, such as age, gender, location, work and education history, interests, app usage, and friends. Facebook and the site hosting an ad would then split the money made on clicks or impressions.”

    Again, it just makes too much sense. How could this possibly not happen? This seems even more likely than Facebook getting into search. It already has the ads and the massive amount of highly personalized data to make this a very attractive offering for publishers who already have various Facebook integrations on their sites. It could only help Facebook cement its place around the web at large even more (making it far less likely to become the next MySpace).

    Constine also points to an interesting nugget of information about Facebook’s privacy policy, which could make it easier for Facebook to launch such a network.

    “Facebook has denied this product is in the works whenever it’s been asked, but last week it revised its privacy policy to expand its ability to serve ads to its user[s] while they’re outside of Facebook.com,” says Constine. “There’d be little reason to do this if something wasn’t in the works. The march across the web of its other social plugins such as the Like button have also paved the way for an ad network plugin. It might need to develop or acquire a company with expertise in analyzing site content so it could serve somewhat relevant ads to site visitors who aren’t logged in to Facebook.”

    Sure, people will freak out about privacy like they always do, but ultimately, Facebook is already showing you things on other sites. It might as well monetize that.

    Would you participate in a Facebook-based AdSense-like program? Let us know in the comments.

  • Facebook’s New Self-Serve Ad Tool: Too Little Too Late?

    While the world has its eyes and wallets trained on Facebook the Company for one reason or another, the people behind Facebook the Website aren’t getting a day off to eat cake. InsideFacebook reports that Facebook is testing a new format for its self-serve ads that links up users with other pages, apps, and other prime destinations for those ads.

    There’s been some question this week as to whether Facebook ads are advantageous to huge corporations or even if Facebook has been doing its part in making it easier for companies to advertise on the site. This update, as InsideFacebook describes it, may be more beneficial to small or mid-size businesses.

    Facebook Self-Serve Ad Tool

    Then again, if the feedback we’ve gotten from you, dear readers, about the effectiveness of Facebook ads is any indication, this new self-serve ad tool might be the equivalent of trying to shove a wine cork in the hole of the Titanic.

    At any rate, the update to the self-serve ad feature performs similarly to how the general search function on Facebook works. You’ll see the profile pic, basic info, and whatnot for whatever pages and apps are deemed to be valuable destinations to send your ads to.

    It remains to be seen if this improves the performance of ads or the good will among businesses who’ve already been burned on the Facebook advertising opportunity.